The Festival (Fall)

The Festival (Fall) is the autumn entry in Hasegawa Konobu IV's set of four seasonal genre prints issued by the Uchida printers of Kyoto in the 1950s. The composition depicts an autumn matsuri (festival) scene, the kind of neighborhood celebration that has accompanied the Japanese harvest season in shrines and small towns throughout the country since the Edo period. Konobu IV's treatment uses the autumn palette of warm reds and oranges against patterned grounds, with children in festival happi coats and patterned headbands gathered around the small portable shrine (mikoshi) or festival drum that anchors the scene's central action. The print stays within the documentary mode of Konobu IV's seasonal work — observing rather than narrating — and the small figures are presented in characteristic patterned kimono and festival clothing that announce their participation in the celebration. The impression is documented in the Japanese Art Open Database from the Robert O. Muller research files, where it preserves the saturated autumn color register and clean keyblock work of the Uchida editions.